


Breathe Again

by language_escapes



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Drowning, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-03
Updated: 2014-04-03
Packaged: 2018-01-18 02:25:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1411498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/language_escapes/pseuds/language_escapes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Artificial respiration is the act of assisting or stimulating respiration, a metabolic process referring to the overall exchange of gases in the body by pulmonary ventilation, external respiration, and internal respiration.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathe Again

**Author's Note:**

> From the prompt "Joan, Sherlock, Breathe Again". Originally posted on my tumblr.
> 
> Fic contains an incident of near drowning.
> 
> Do not take first aid lessons from this fic.

When Joan was seven, her stepfather signed her and Oren up for swim lessons at the local Y. Oren had done terribly, and as far as she knows, still avoids community pools for fear of someone pushing him in, but Joan had taken to swimming quite well. She’d enjoyed feeling safe in the water, and she liked the clean mechanics of the front crawl, the breast stroke, and the side stroke. When she was sixteen, she trained as a lifeguard, and every summer until the one before her senior year of college, she’d worked as a lifeguard.

Apparently, Sherlock either never had swimming lessons or, like Oren, he is simply a terrible swimmer, because when their suspects shoves him into the pool, he doesn’t come back up.

It takes Joan a minute to notice, too focused on tackling Jeremy Dover and handcuffing him with the zip ties she now carries in her pockets at all times. When she’s certain that he isn’t going anywhere, she looks over to grin at Sherlock and realizes he isn’t there.

Then it’s just a moment to kick her shoes off and shrug out of her jacket before she dives into the pool.

She’s able to locate him pretty quickly. Swimming in clear, chlorine filled pool water is a very different thing from rescuing people in murky lakes. His eyes are closed, and she fleetingly wonders if he hit his head, and that’s why he wasn’t still struggling. She grabs him and kicks her way up to the surface.

When her head clears the water, Sherlock’s head resting on her shoulder, she sees that Marcus and Captain Gregson have arrived. Marcus is by the edge of the pool, his suit jacket puddle on the ground, one shoe half off. “Hey!” he shouts.

She doesn’t waste her breath shouting back, and instead kicks herself and Sherlock to the edge. She lifts Sherlock as much as she can- she hasn’t done any lifeguarding in almost two decades, but she can still move people bigger than her if she must- and Marcus carefully drags him out of the water, hands cradling his neck and head. She lifts herself up and out, pushing her hair out of her face. She looks over to where Marcus is checking on Sherlock.

“He isn’t breathing,” Marcus says, voice tight. He twists to look at Captain Gregson, who is keeping an eye on Dover. “Call an ambulance!”

Joan crawls over to Sherlock, shoving Marcus away. “Move,” she snaps, knowing he’ll forgive her sharpness. After all, she did the same thing to Sherlock after Marcus was shot. She carefully puts her fingers on Sherlock’s carotid, relieved to feel a ragged pulse. That makes things somewhat simpler for her. She turns his head to the side, watching the water drain out of his nose and mouth. Then she turns his face back to her and starts mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, just like she’d been trained to do when she was sixteen, just like she learned when studying to be a doctor. (She also learned that mouth-to-mouth isn’t nearly as effective as television makes it out to be, and that isn’t a helpful thought, so she ignores it.)

She doesn’t know how long she breathes for him, forcing air into his lungs. She loses track of time outside of the rhythm of four breaths, listen for breathing, check pulse, repeat. Finally- _finally_ \- Sherlock starts coughing, water bubbling up and trickling out the sides of his mouth. She gently turns him on his side, letting the water flow away as he splutters.

“You okay?” Marcus asks. She realizes dimly that he’s next to her, that the _1-2-3-4_ she heard after each breath she forced into Sherlock was Marcus counting steadily for her.

“No,” she says, and then shakes her head, sliding her hand onto Sherlock’s shoulder, steadying him as he coughs. “I will be.”

“Ambulance should be here any second. We’ll get him to a hospital, he’ll be fine.”

She nods absently, not bothering to bring up that the first 48 hours after a near drowning are just as dangerous as the near drowning itself. She thinks about pneumonia, pulmonary edema, hypothermia, heart failure, infection, and then she very, very deliberately doesn’t think about any of those things. Instead, she focuses on watching Sherlock breathe again. And again. And again.

They offer to let her ride in the ambulance with Sherlock, wanting to get her looked at as well, but she waves them away, a towel wrapped around her shoulders and a promise to meet them at the hospital on her lips. Marcus gives her a worried look, but she waves him on too, telling him she’ll call him later. He calls a cab for her, and then goes with the Captain and Dover, leaving Joan on the curbside.

Joan takes the moment to breathe.

And breathe again.

And again. And again.

When the cab driver pulls up, he very tactfully doesn’t mention the tears on her cheeks.


End file.
